The latest political, social and economic changes in Russia have had a significant influence on the art scene in Russia and have provoked an immediate response from many artists. New art and activist practices have emerged, many of them are initiated by female artists whose strong statements and opinions are impossible to ignore.
In her talk at Pushkin house in the framework of Victoria Lomasko’s exhibition, curator Maria Veits will speak about female artists and curators whose practice is closely connected to the topics of gender, feminism, freedom of speech, contested history and silenced voices and will especially focus on projects taking place in public spaces and in collaboration with different communities and social institutions. Veits will outline projects by well-known artists and will also address new artistic strategies of survival in the current political context that are based on collective work and creating alternative art platforms.
Artist and poet Daria Serenko shows one of her poems on the Moscow metro
Maria Veits is an independent curator and researcher, co-founder of Creative Association of Curators TOK, a curatorial collective and art organization working at the intersection of contemporary art and social practice. She has collaborated with Pro Arte Foundation, Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation, The National Center for Contemporary Art (Russia), Bosch Foundation, Goethe Institute, Tel Aviv Museum of Arts, Kultura Medialna (Ukraine) as invited curator, lecturer and speaker. Recent curatorial projects include Dreamland Never Found (3rd Jerusalem biennial, 2017), ‘States of Control’ (Helsinki, 2016, co-curated with Anna Bitkina), ‘/De/Constructing Borders, (Dnipro, 2016).
Her current curatorial interests include the activist practices of young artists that belong to the last Soviet generation and the ways they use public space (both physical and virtual) for an open and engaging sociopolitical discussion.
